S&P 500 Climbs Ahead of Christmas Break with Tech Gains and $10B Equity Inflows

The S&P 500 rose 1.1% Tuesday as tech stocks extended their rally. Equity inflows reached $10 billion, marking the largest since January 2017, while trading activity thinned ahead of the Christmas holiday.

Tech Stocks Propel S&P 500 Gains in Light Holiday Trading

With tech companies maintaining their good start to the week, the S&P 500 finished higher on Tuesday in thin trade ahead of the Christmas holiday.

Among the market leaders at 1:00 p.m. ET (18:00 GMT) were the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100, which both had 1.1% increases, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which climbed 0.9%, or 350 points.

There will be no trading on Christmas Day or after the New York Stock Exchange's early Tuesday closure in observance of Christmas Eve.

Mag 7 Tech Stocks Lead Market Momentum

While NVIDIA Corporation remained flat, the so-called Mag 7—Apple, Amazon.com, Meta Platforms, Alphabet, Class A, and Tesla—continued their good start to the week in technology.

Following the beginning of a new trade probe into legacy chips manufactured in China, the Biden administration sent chip stocks, which had already accumulated gains the day before, up a little bit more. This could result in new duties on semiconductors made in China.

Per Investing.com, recouping from an intraday loss, American Airlines Group shares were flat on Tuesday after the company momentarily grounded all U.S. flights due to a "technical issue." A decision was made to remove the ground stop.

Novo Nordisk Faces Pressure from Weight Loss Drug Study

Declining expectations in a late-stage research of Novo Nordisk A/S's weight loss medicine caused the company to tumble, stalling its comeback from a previous plunge.

For the seventh week in a row, BofA Securities said that its clients kept buying US stocks. More specifically, inflows hit $10 billion, the highest level since January 2017 and the second-highest since 2008.

Large-Cap Stocks Dominate $10 Billion Equity Inflows

Investments were evenly distributed between individual equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), as in previous weeks, with a larger influx into individual stocks. Traders were mostly interested in purchasing large-cap equities, with small caps seeing relatively muted inflows.

For a third consecutive week, both institutional and retail investors boosted their equities holdings; retail clients did the same. Hedge funds, on the other hand, sold more than they bought for the second week running.

Institutional clients' inflows reached a nine-month high, following a normal pattern of increased buying activity following mutual funds' tax-loss selling in October.

“Private clients typically are big sellers in December amid tax loss selling vs. big net buyers in January. While this group has been a buyer of ETFs this month, it has sold single stocks, though slightly less so than in the average December,” said Jill Carey Hall and other BofA analysts.